Mothers — Embodiments of God’s Love

Today is Mothers’ Day, so I’ll like to start our reflection with a joke which I know many mothers will agree with. The joke is about the difference between a dog and a cat: A dog looks at his owner who feeds him, protects him, and cares for him, and says to himself, "She must be a god." A cat looks at his owner who feeds him, protects him, and cares for him, and says to himself, "I must be a god." Sometimes in our relationship with our mothers we adopt the attitude of the cat and take the love and care our mothers for granted. We take ourselves to be gods and mothers are simply there to serve us. On a day like this we are invited to adopt more of the dog’s attitude and be thankful and grateful for mothers’ love and care. I think the most beautiful thing that God ever created is a mother. There are three kinds of love: eros (sensual or romantic love), philia (serviceable or beneficial love), and agape (sacrificial or unconditional love). Which one of these best describes a mother’s love. It is agape, unconditional, sacrificial, untiring love. A mother’s love is unconditional. Mother loves us whether we are beautiful or ugly, smart or dull, able-bodied or handicapped, a success or a failure in society, whether we are grateful to mother or ungrateful. Sometimes the work of a mother consists literally in feeding the mouth that bites her. (Ask your Mom.) A mother’s love is sacrificial. Unlike the love of friendship where we look forward to some kind of reward, a mother’s love seeks to give even to the point of risking her life. In the developing nations every pregnancy is a mortal danger because many women die in pregnancy and childbirth. Even in the developed nations it is still a risk. You remember the case in Britain a few years ago of a woman who was found to be pregnant with eight babies in her womb. She was advised by her doctor that unless she did an abortion and removed some of them, her own life was at stake. She refused to abort any of them. Unfortunately she ended up losing all eight through miscarriage, but you can see how she risked her own life in order to give life to the unborn babies in her womb. This is the kind of love that made Jesus give up his own life to save us. A mother’s love never gives up. Did you see those haunting pictures of the hunger-stricken refugees from war-torn Biafra, Ethiopia or Rwanda with skeleton mothers holding on to their equally skeleton babies that had absolutely no chance of survival? Nevertheless, the mother would never abandon the baby and seek her own life. No, she would keep on holding on to the baby even if the situation was hopeless. What about St Monica who spent her life running after her wayward child, Augustine, till she brought him to the knowledge of God, to sanity, to peace, to true love. All these qualities of a mother’s love are for us a foretaste of God’s tender and untiring love for us. And this is what we are celebrating today. We are celebrating mothers because through their hands God cares for us when we are in need, through their mouths God speaks to us words of consolation when we are heartbroken, through their heart God pours out to us his unconditional love that never gives up un us. That is the meaning of an old Jewish proverb that says, “God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers.” When we talk of mother, we mean all mothers, including single mothers, step-mothers, adopted mothers, and even spiritual mothers. Their task as mothers is the most important task in the world. Today we acknowledge it and we say, “God bless you mothers.” We cannot forget that there are women who cannot fulfill their desire to be mothers, who have been looking for children to adopt but can’t find one, while millions of children are aborted each year by their very mothers who are supposed to love and protect them. God forgive them, they know not what they do. If you do not know what to say to your mother today, at least you can say one thing, “Thank you mother for not aborting me.”